Arizona's Brewer: Dump Electoral College

The 2012 presidential race was arguably determined by a handful of states on the east coast and midwestern regions of the country, leaving most of the rest of the country to cast votes while being largely ignored by candidates and the media.

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer said Sunday that while the Electoral College system may have worked well when the founding fathers included it in the Constitution, it’s time to use the popular vote so that every vote “counts,” reported the East Valley Tribune.

“But it’s pretty disappointing when you think that just a few states really determine who’s been elected president,” Brewer said. “And they get all the attention.”

In this year’s presidential race, candidates and the media were most focused on swing states such as Ohio, Florida, Virginia and North Carolina, leaving much of the nation’s participation in the election to be a national assumption.

Arizona is generally regarded as a lock for Republican candidates, though voters there elected Bill Clinton to the White House twice. It is not generally a main focus for campaigns.

Brewer said her state, and others, might get more attention if candidates knew they needed every single vote they could find across the country. She thinks that allowing all of those votes to count a little more would also help limit voter disenfranchisement because they know their ballot really counts.

“If it was a popular vote, I think all the states would receive attention,” Brewer said. “I think the public, overwhelmingly from the people I’ve spoken to, they would like to know that their vote does count, and it was counted together with everybody else’s vote, that they were part of that win.”

The 2012 presidential race was arguably determined by a handful of states on the east coast and midwestern regions of the country, leaving most of the rest of the country to cast votes while being largely ignored by candidates and the media.
Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer said...